Terry McAuliffe is unhappy - with Democrats

PETERSBURG, Va. – Don’t be fooled by the expansive grin, outstretched arms and the booming baritone with which Terry McAuliffe greets throngs of churchgoers here: The governor of Virginia is frustrated.

Not with his job in Richmond — McAuliffe says he has loved every second of it. The only problem with being governor, he laments, is that sometimes he has to sleep. If powerful Republicans have stymied McAuliffe’s legislative agenda, he takes it in stride. On his overarching goal — economic development — the governor pronounces his administration “as wildly successful as anything I could want to do.”

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It’s McAuliffe’s own party that has him down.

He begins carefully — “I don’t mean to be overly critical …” — but then he gets rolling. In a 2014 campaign fought against a backdrop of dropping unemployment and record highs for the Dow, he says there’s no excuse for Democrats to cede the argument on jobs to Republicans. “They didn’t talk about it!” he exclaims. “They didn’t have a strategy.”

“Why come out and vote for the Democratic Party? There was no message to say: Here’s what we’ve done. I wish the party or whoever had done a national media campaign and say, here’s what you get when you elect Democrats,” McAuliffe says. “But there was no — what was the message out of ’14? I’m asking you rhetorically — do you know? No. What was it?”

McAuliffe, a close friend of Hillary and Bill Clinton, calls it an urgent, hair-on-fire priority for Democrats to learn how to tie together an assertive, socially liberal message with close-to-home concerns about opportunity and economic competitiveness. In 2008, he was Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, but says he won’t take a formal role with her 2016 campaign, if she runs, because of his commitments as governor. But he says he talks “all the time” with Bill Clinton and would be an enthusiastic “friend of the family” if and when Hillary Clinton launches her campaign.

“The biggest issue in this upcoming election, it’s still going to be the economy. It’s going to be this income inequality, the issue of the middle class dropping down,” McAuliffe predicts, with a shot of nostalgia for the 1990s: “I always like to say, Bill Clinton created more millionaires and billionaires than any president, but you know what, more people moved out of poverty. Middle-class income — all-time high.”

A former Democratic Party chairman, McAuliffe has been thrust into an unexpected role in recent weeks: Less than a year after his swearing-in as governor, he is one of his party’s most senior elected officials outside Washington. This onetime problem-child candidate, battered by opposition researchers for his background as a Beltway operator and his use of political contacts to fuel a lucrative business career, is now one of his party’s last remaining swing-state governors. After a 2014 debacle that nearly took down Virginia Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, McAuliffe has become perhaps the most electorally successful Democrat of President Barack Obama’s second term.

As such, McAuliffe says, he plans to speak out more aggressively about the future of the Democratic Party. He has burned up the phones over the last week to tell his fellow Democratic governors — 16 so far — that the party’s message is in dire need of a reboot. Proud of the political formula he has honed in Virginia, the governor plans to visit New Hampshire to deliver a speech urging Democrats to recommit themselves to winning the economic debate.

On a recent Sunday, that approach was on full display: McAuliffe swept into the small city of Petersburg, visiting eight African-American churches in the span of a few hours (stopping at one church twice, visiting both early and mid-morning services). The governor declared each church to be the finest “in all the globe.” At every stop, he thanked his audience for their support in his 2013 election. He touted his work making it easier for felons to get their voting rights back and scrapping certain testing requirements for schools. Most insistently, McAuliffe advertised his record on economic development: $5 billion in investment deals negotiated so far, handily outstripping his predecessors. “Not that I’m counting,” McAuliffe repeatedly joked.

Petersburg has a special place in McAuliffe’s in-state narrative, furnishing a prime example of how his let’s-make-a-deal approach to the governor’s job has paid dividends. The distressed community here suffered a grievous economic blow in 2013 when the Boehringer Ingelheim Chemicals company announced it would close a plant there and eliminate 240 jobs. This year, McAuliffe persuaded the Chinese company UniTao to buy the facility and reopen it, hiring an estimated 376 employees. (“There’s not many business folks I can’t pick up the phone, on the globe … and say here’s why you need to come to Virginia,” he explains in the car. “We’ve used it extensively.”)

What makes McAuliffe’s political story interesting is not merely that he has a good rap on economic development. It’s that he has an economy-tailored sales pitch — on everything. From gay rights to abortion, to Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act and even the unfolding sexual assault crisis at the University of Virginia, for McAuliffe it’s all tied into the economic bottom line.

Extending marriage and adoption rights to gay couples, McAuliffe says, made Virginia “open and welcoming” to big businesses, as well as to families. At a tourism convention in Northern Virginia last week, he bragged to vendors about his record of keeping women’s health centers open. With his eye on taking back the Virginia state Senate in 2015, McAuliffe plans to go after Republicans who have rejected federal health care funds for harming their constituents — and making their communities unfriendly to economic growth.

“Lee County lost their hospital. I’m good at sales. I enjoy it. I can’t bring any businesses there,” McAuliffe says. “Do you think any company from the globe is going to put their manufacturing facility in a county that no longer has a hospital and if some of their workers have a heart attack, they have to get in an ambulance for 80 miles?”

Asked about the recent Rolling Stone magazine article detailing horrific rape allegations at UVA, McAuliffe says has delivered a stern message to the university president, Teresa Sullivan. “She’d better resolve it,” he says. “Totally unacceptable.” And then — the business angle.

“I am traveling the globe today and being very successful at bringing businesses in. I need a workforce of the future,” he says. “When this affects our prestige university, this affects Virginia. In addition to all of the issues that go with the woman and the sexual assault, you are now hurting Virginia.”

For Democrats, McAuliffe believes, the party’s national message on the full spectrum of issues must be similarly tied to the bread-and-butter concerns of average Americans. “Everything’s been encapsulated into the jobs argument, but I’ve gotten everything done socially,” he said.

So far, McAuliffe’s playbook has kept him firmly in the good graces of the Democratic base, which applauded his support for gay marriage and adoption rights and his vow to be a “brick wall” protecting health centers that provide abortions. As he worked the crowd at a series of Baptist churches on Sunday, members of the crowd praised the governor in emphatic terms — “He’s not a good governor; he’s a great governor,” one man said — though few named specific accomplishments that earned their admiration.

For these Democratic constituents, merely the sustained attention from a governor is a welcome change of pace. Introducing McAuliffe at Higher Way Ministries, Petersburg Sheriff Vanessa Crawford drew cheers by asking the crowd: “How many governors have you known to say ‘thank you’? Nobody!” Richmond-area radio host Jack Gravely, a parishioner at the nearby Good Shepherd Baptist Church, said he was glad to see McAuliffe tending to his base “after the whupping that the Democrats took.”

Unlike some other Democrats whom Gravely declined to name, the broadcaster said McAuliffe “hasn’t run away from his pedigree, his party or his president.”

Virginia Republicans, for their part, say McAuliffe is something less than an overpowering figure — a governor whose hopeless crusade for Medicaid expansion has left him with little sway over the Legislature. But, they add, he is no longer a figure to be mocked or dismissed, as many in the GOP once viewed him.

Republican state Del. Greg Habeeb said the Democratic executive was an abrupt shift from his predecessor, GOP Gov. Bob McDonnell, who was known for his deep relationships in Richmond and his interest in legislative draftsmanship. McAuliffe takes a “wildly different” approach, according to Habeeb, and seems more interested in going it alone on economic development: “I’d say the impression is that he doesn’t want to be governor; he wants to be secretary of commerce.”

“My perception of him is, he’s a salesman,” Habeeb explained. “That’s a very valuable role to play. I think it’s less than the governorship can be, but it’s up to every governor how big they want their governorship to be.”

You look at that Electoral College — five, six true swing states. We’re one of those. It’s a great state for us, and I will be promoting our two senators very hard to whoever our nominee may be.

For this particular governor, the role of salesman-in-chief really may be satisfaction enough. McAuliffe bats away the idea that it might be a disappointment for him to finish his term without a landmark legislative achievement, like McDonnell’s transportation package or then-Gov. Mark Warner’s tax deal. If his chief accomplishment is to spur economic growth that offsets painful federal budget cuts, McAuliffe says he’ll be deeply gratified.

Asked if it’s time for a Virginian on the national ticket, he offers an enthusiastic “yes,” citing the state’s two senators, Tim Kaine and Mark Warner. “You look at that Electoral College — five, six true swing states. We’re one of those,” McAuliffe says. “It’s a great state for us, and I will be promoting our two senators very hard to whoever our nominee may be.”

Right now, McAuliffe seems happy in the job he has. Working the Sunday-morning crowd in Petersburg, he tells worshipers that in his next life he’d like to come back as a pastor, quizzes middle-schoolers on their grades and beams as he recounts a visit to Hampton Roads where he visited 16 churches in a single day. Shedding the note-taking, furrowed-brow persona of his 2013 campaign, McAuliffe and his longtime aide, Secretary of the Commonwealth Levar Stoney, inform a pastor that legendary record producer Quincy Jones once described McAuliffe as “the blackest white man [he] had ever met.” In one pulpit after another, McAuliffe throws his arms out to the sides and raises his voice to a shout.

“Folks, I’m just starting!” McAuliffe proclaims at Good Shepherd. “This is just an appetizer!”